Assessing students' communication and interpersonal skills across evaluation settings.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Clinical Skills Assessment
• Communication Skills Training

Background:

• Interpersonal and communication skills are crucial for medical students' clinical competence.
• These skills are assessed in standardized patient (SP) exams, including the US Medical Licensure Examination (USMLE).
• The study evaluated the correlation between two different SP exams.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare medical students' performance on SP satisfaction measures between a third-year family medicine OSCE and a fourth-year CPX.
• To determine if the third-year OSCE could predict performance on the fourth-year CPX.
• To assess the utility of the OSCE in identifying students' interpersonal skills for future licensing exams.

Main Methods:

• 127 medical students completed both a third-year OSCE and a fourth-year CPX (a pilot of the National Board of Medical Examiners SP Exam).
• Modified American Board of Internal Medicine Patient Satisfaction Questionnaires were used to assess interpersonal skills in both exams.
• Standardized scores were calculated, correlations were analyzed, and logistic regression was used to assess predictive ability.

Main Results:

• The correlation between OSCE and CPX patient satisfaction scores was weak (r=0.08).
• The third-year OSCE did not significantly predict poor performance on the fourth-year CPX.
• No significant predictive ability was found for the OSCE in identifying students' performance on the CPX.

Conclusions:

• Routine end-of-clerkship OSCEs may not effectively identify students' interpersonal and communication skills for higher-level clinical performance exams.
• The findings raise questions about the predictive validity of OSCEs for future components of the USMLE SP exam.
• Further research is needed to refine assessment methods for clinical competence and communication skills in medical education.